I could melt my bike down and make a necklace but my bike has still gone

indeed, the filing cabinet has certainly gone.

At the risk of immense ridicule I have to say I tend to go with the after life concept

seems to be a built in human trait otherwise HTF do religions continue? Can't decide if it's a nice/benign we'll all get together afterwards and laugh about this later style thing or just a tool devised to enable/prolong bad stuff happening in real life "don't worry about how shit your life is, don't you know? the meek shall inherit the earth".

I think there’s a commonly held belief by many that atheists want to convert (cure?) all religious believers. Now I can’t talk for any other atheists, but I couldn’t give a rats arse what people choose to believe in, it’s merely the impingement on my life and that of others that those beliefs cause that I strongly object to. So, be my guest, believe what you like, but stop mutilating kids genitals, treating women and homosexuals as inferior beings, stop killing animals in barbaric ways, and stop telling me I can’t exercise my right to announce that I think your stupid belief is, well, stupid. In return you are quite welcome to call my adherence to proven facts stupid, I really don’t mind.

@ the ppl slating aggressively arguing athiests.... Say you knew someone who came to you one day very happy because they had won the jamican lottery and that all they needed to get the money was to email their bank account details. If you knew that the jamican lottery was a farce, wouldn't you tell them that it was load of old rubbish?

I liked Terry prachetts take on heaven where what happens when you die is whatever you believe will happen. I also think that there is a bigger debate that even if heaven doesn't physcially exist can it exist purely as a belief. I like to think that people do live on after they die, in the thoughts and memories of those that knew them.

So billions of people are terrified of gay people and hate women? There's no point even debating with someone who has such a closed mind. I genuinely feel sorry for you if that is how you view your fellow human beings.

If there is an afterlife, one that we can still exist as individuals in, it will go on for ever won't it? So its either sitting on a cloud playing a harp, chatting to your Dad, going on the ultimate MTB ride or just contemplating the ineffableness of everything . . . for ever.

I imagine that could get quite boring, especially after the first 10,000 years. Unless you could watch events unfold I the "real" world. It would be the ultimate reality TV show. You could sit there tutting and saying "it wasn't like that in my day".

But then after a trillion years the universe wold come to an end and it would be back to boring again.

@ the ppl slating aggressively arguing athiests.... Say you knew someone who came to you one day very happy because they had won the jamican lottery and that all they needed to get the money was to email their bank account details. If you knew that the jamican lottery was a farce, wouldn't you tell them that it was load of old rubbish?

Has anyone ever won the Jamaican lottery in this manner.... ? Of course not

OK but I can tell you as someone who until a few years ago, ( just like you, others on here and possibly most) was basically an atheist ... that I am now more content, calmer, feel wonderfully free and basically just much happier than I have ever been.

Not a bad lotto win really, wouldn't you say ?

And the best part is you don't have to invest any money, just a bit of time and an open mind

Unfortunately there's plenty of anybody who hate any group you could care to think of (with the possible exception of baby robins). Having been influenced in your hate by a "higher power" seems worse to me than if you hate just because you're ignorant or an arsehole.

Wanted to get my kids in the very good (turns out to be brilliant) church school which meant church attendance.

Now it occurred to me at the time, I can either go to church with resentment (meant giving up sunday morning rides) and thoughts of it's utter bobbins or go down there with an open mind as see what it's all about.

So some of it was heavy going and felt myself turning my nose up at parts of it ( Forgive my sins etc etc … I haven’t sinned what you on about ?? But it gets explained/you work it out for yourself) but some of it touched a nerve … the be excellent to each other and yourself bits.

So the weeks past and then found myself feeling happier while I sat in there with my family around me then the old pie and liquor gives the mustard seed sermon and I think ... "alright then, go on, lets do the confirmation course I don’t have to commit at the end of it… again, what have I got to lose…. Give it a try…."

It was around this point I told the vicar I didn’t believe in God … maybe not the smartest thing to do when you’re trying to get your kids in his school… but what I did tell him was I thought there was more to life than a massive flat screen tele and a flash motor…. Guess I was already on my way.

But here's the thing ...I still don't believe in what I thought God was back then.... Strangely enough I'm not stupid enough to think there's a sky wizard sitting on a cloud somewhere.

But I have been clever enough to learn and found out myself, through my own experience, that God exists.

I think I am in the God exists group, as I simply can't believe in the infinite, which means that God in some form or another exists; as you can't argue with physics.

Some people on the other hand are happy to take the leap of faith and believe in an infinite universe. Their choice, and I don't mind; just seems a bit daft to me, like someone believing in giving 110% percent.......

Thing is with Science is the more we find out, the less we realise we know, so to say if science can't prove it then it doesn't exist is stupid as that assumes we already know everything their is to know, where in actual fact we know next to nothing.

chewkw - Member
Ro5ey - Member
But I have been clever enough to learn and found out myself, through my own experience, that God exists.

Peace out

Which one? The one who "created" everything? You are confused.

So you believe the Universe is infinite? If not, then yes their must be *one*.

Unless you are in the group who thinks that nothing is something, so there was something before the big bang which may have caused our existenance but that's a massive leap of faith, even bigger than believing in a 'god', or you are happy to *believe* the universe has no limits and will continue growing forever, which makes no sense to me

Most sensible criticism centers not on the existance of a deity, but rather the non falsifiable nature of such a claim and if a claim is non-falsifiable then I for one think it can be dismissed until such time as it becomes falsifiable. See Russell's teapot.

So you believe the Universe is infinite? If not then yes they must be *one*.

I am not a person of science nor a person of God, but I accept that there are people who are strictly scientific and there are people who are adamant of the "creator".

Both have their own explanations but I do not fall into any of those two.

Unless you are in the group who thinks that nothing is something, so there was something before the big bang which may have caused our existenance but that's a massive leap of faith, even bigger than believing in a 'god'

There is not such thing that can appear without previous causation put it bluntly. You have to find the way yourself.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium—the state of maximum entropy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.

If the universe isn't a closed system, ie: its just really mind numbing massive but not infinite. Then unless you don't believe in Physics their must be a god, or else we don't exist.

Which is one of the reasons a lot of brilliant scientist throughout history had to change their minds about the existence of 'god', such as Newton, Darwin and Einstein.

It ain't as simple as 'I don't believe, so it can't be true', your opinion (as does mine) doesn't actually matter that much.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases, because isolated systems spontaneously evolve toward thermodynamic equilibrium—the state of maximum entropy. Equivalently, perpetual motion machines of the second kind are impossible.

Statistical fluke. The universe is big. [Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.]

It is the entropy of the total system that you need to consider so while our own entropy is something of an curiosity overall the system is increasing. Think of it as throwing dice. If you throw them enough you will get a random pattern on a large scale but you'll get some strange sequences along the way.